


Lost Souls

by NotAMuggleMiss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Forbidden Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25600567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAMuggleMiss/pseuds/NotAMuggleMiss
Summary: Broken by war and years of secrecy, Hermione and Draco struggle to find true happiness together while hiding behind double lives.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 10
Kudos: 57
Collections: 2020 Sounds Like Dramione





	Lost Souls

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [2020SoundsLikeDramione](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/2020SoundsLikeDramione) collection. 



> Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me but are the property of J.K.R. and Warner Bros. No copyright infringement is intended. Thank you to my alpha and/or beta for their time and help.  
> The prompt for my story was:  
> "How I wish, how I wish you were here  
> We're just two lost souls  
> Swimming in a fish bowl  
> Year after year"  
> Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

It had all started as a perfectly normal evening for Hermione. She had locked up the shop from the inside and slipped into her office to floo home to Rosehill Cottage. What followed as she stepped out onto the hearth had also been unfortunately normal.  She had barely stepped into the charming cottage they had long called her home when  Draco had come practically running into the main room from the study and whisked her out the front door before quickly apparating them both to a terribly familiar alleyway.

She bristled as she yanked her arm out of his grip and nearly stomped out into the road as she rounded the corner. He caught up to her as she was trying to unlock the door to the first flat and reached out to touch her on the shoulder.

“Hermione… I’m so sorry. It was unexpected.” 

“Don’t you  _ Hermione _ me, Draco Malfoy,” she scolded him. She shivered in the cool October breeze, wearing nothing but her jeans and a light jumper as she had never meant to set foot outside tonight. She jiggled the key, and the door finally burst open and they both stepped inside.

“You know how my father is, love. He’s decided we’re going over financials tonight, it will probably take hours. But he should be gone by sunrise. I’ll come back for you by lunch, I promise,” Draco soothed. 

“Seventeen years, Draco!” Hermione yelled back. “I realise it isn’t a nice round number this year, but don’t you think we deserve to celebrate our life together?”

“Don’t you think I know that? Do you really think it means nothing to me? Or that I like knowing you’re here when you could be home with me? I certainly don’t want to be going over endless numbers with my father on our anniversary.” 

Hermione turned and walked away, taking a deep breath to try and calm herself but the moment she faced him again, her rage seemed to flood right back into her.

“Then why don’t you just refuse him? You’re a grown man in his thirties for Merlin’s sake!” She snarled at him, raising her hands up to grip her hair in frustration. 

“It just isn’t that easy! I’m trying to protect you! Look, I don’t have time to argue right now. I told him I was popping to the office for a file…”

“The only reason we’re still doing this, hiding like teenagers having a forbidden romance, is because you’re too much of a coward to live your own life the way you want! And quite frankly, I deserve better than this!” Hermione shouted. She felt the weight of her statement land over both of them in the silence that followed it.

“You’re right, you know. I am a coward. You deserve better.” Draco raked his fingers through his hair and avoided making eye contact. “I was never the man you hoped I could be, Hermione. If you decide you still want the coward I always have been, you know where to find me tomorrow evening.”

Before she could even register what had just happened, Draco walked out the door, slamming it behind him. Hermione was shocked silent for longer than she would have liked to admit. It wasn’t that they had never argued before - they had been having nearly the same argument, in one form or another, multiple times a year for the last 15 years. It was more that something felt different this time. There was a finality about the way that he had agreed with her when he never had before, only to choose the easy way out again. There had always been excuses before, and empty promises about compromises and changes to come at a later date. Never the quiet resignation she had seen tonight.

She walked mechanically to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. It was an automatic gesture, really, and always what she did first, whether she was facing a crisis, a celebration, an unplanned visit, or insomnia. She wasn’t even sure she would drink it, if she thought about it honestly, but the ritual of making it was enough to soothe her, either way. She set the kettle to boil and pulled out one of the nondescript mugs she found in the cupboard, momentarily lamenting the loss of her favourite cup, hidden at the back of the shelf in their cottage, where it wouldn’t be noticed by prying eyes. 

The nondescript mugs were actually the least of the problem. Nothing in the flat really felt like home, because it was never truly meant to  _ be _ one. It was always just a temporary stop. It was comfortable and well-equipped. But despite the somewhat staggering amount of time she ended up spending here, it lacked the personality and the lived-in feeling of a home. Most of all, there was nothing of Draco in it. The living room furniture was comfortable, covered in plush cushions for lounging, and there were shelves with copies of her most beloved books, but none of the surfaces in the room had Draco’s half-read tomes piled on them haphazardly with notes hanging out of them. The bedroom was cozy with a large, soft bed, but none of Draco’s ties were hanging from the headboard or the lamp, and his shoes weren’t kicked off in a heap on his side of the room. Even the luxurious shower in the bathroom felt wrong without his products invading every shelf. 

Shaking her head, she poured the water and rinsed out the kettle before straining the tea and adding a splash of milk. As she made her way to her usual place in the large armchair, she couldn’t help but wonder at how they had managed to go around in circles for fifteen years and end up right back in the same place they started, though perhaps more bitter with each passing argument.

It had been different in the beginning, when they had only just come together. Draco had called their first kiss an accident; she was partial to naming it a fortunate stroke of serendipity.  A chance meeting in an abandoned classroom between a newly-marked Death Eater and Voldemort's most-hated mudblood should not have turned into anything other than a fight.

She had stormed into the room with her arms full of books after vacating the Gryffindor common room, intent on doing her homework in peace and quiet somewhere the red-headed git she had once called a friend couldn’t mock her. She hadn’t even noticed Draco sitting on the floor in the corner until she had finished angrily warding the door against entry and thrown a few extra privacy spells at it for good measure.  An angry rant had been poised on her lips the moment she had spotted him, but it had died there when his tired eyes had met her own, and she had seen the tears streaming down his pale cheeks.

She had stepped forward cautiously and gently placed her books on a desk near the door before approaching him. 

“Are you alright, Malfoy?” She had asked, genuinely concerned.

“Do I look alright, Granger?” He had hissed at her, his eyes momentarily aflame before he had abruptly buried his face in his arms again and started to sob in earnest.

Gingerly, she had lowered herself to her knees on the floor beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. 

“Is there anything I can do to help?” 

Rubbing his eyes on his sleeve, he had looked up at her then. Looking into his eyes had been almost painful for her as she had witnessed how broken the boy was.

“ Help me forget,” he had pleaded. “Make it all go away, just for a little while.”

Before his words could sink in, he had leaned toward her, and she had instinctively known he meant to kiss her. His lips had covered hers gently, then not so gently, and within minutes she had been straddling his lap engaging in the most passionate kiss she could imagine. It had been her first and she knew she would always remember it. She had returned to the common room hours later thoroughly snogged, her homework untouched. 

That classroom had become their sanctuary over the course of the year, and they had returned as often as they could. At first, it had been enough to forget, to spend a moment relieving the stresses of life on opposite sides of a war. Inevitably, the joining of their bodies had become more. They were, after all, strangely compatible on many levels. As different as their backgrounds were, they had come to find they had a lot in common. They had learned to trust each other and most importantly had come to rely on each other. It hadn’t taken more than a nudge for their strange friendship to turn into love. It had been thrilling and terrifying to have no secrets between them, when secrecy from everyone else had been the only thing ensuring their survival.

I t was ironic that the secrecy that ensured their safety and security in those early years had impacted their relationship so much. When she took the time to really consider it, it was obviously at the root of many of their recurring issues.  Catching a glimpse of the darkening sky out the window, Hermione reached for the tea and took a sip. It was already cold, though she was hardly surprised, that always seemed to be the case. She flicked her wand at the cup, casting what she was certain would be the first of many warming charms. Nights alone in the flat were always long after an argument. She couldn’t help but long for a time before she had started to visit this place.

Immediately after the war, they had both been so broken from their experiences that it had been incredibly easy to fall back into their private little world like the two lost souls they were. Hermione had struggled to heal from the emotional scars of the torture she’d endured and Draco had been reeling from the loss of his mother, who had died in the Battle of Hogwarts. They both probably should have had therapy, but opening up to other people was never on either of their minds. The secrecy had fit them like an old, comfortable glove at first. As time passed, there always seemed to be reasons to justify it continuing. 

Their first concern had been to hide their relationship to avoid discrediting Hermione’s testimony at Draco’s trial. It didn’t matter, somehow, that all she had had to give them were facts: the spells that he had surreptitiously cast over her at the Malfoy Manor had saved her life, and his refusal to identify Harry had possibly won them the war. Their fears of Azkaban, of being separated, had been real, and so they had hidden the truth. Hermione had agonized over keeping the information from Harry and the Weasleys, but her fear of their reaction had been more than she could imagine surviving in her fragile state.

Lucius Malfoy had become their next big obstacle when he had been released early from Azkaban in exchange for his help rounding up the Death Eaters left at large. Six months had passed since the original trials, and Draco had argued that the last thing he needed while his reputation was still in tatters was for his father to disown him for a relationship with a Muggleborn witch. With Narcissa gone, there had been no one to appeal to Lucius’ common sense, no one to support them in the face of old, ingrained blood purity, as he had always been certain his mother would. 

Their lives had already been so hard, and he had felt it would be foolish to pass up on access to his inheritance as it would secure their physical and financial comfort, at least. There had also been the possibility that time might bring Lucius to their side, even if only for the love of his only son or for the sake of appearances. They had known by then that Hermione’s parents could never have their memories restored, and their secrecy had begun to drive distance into her relationship with the Weasleys. Life without any family at all had seemed a bleak prospect.

Draco had chosen to do what was expected of him, and one of the conditions to accessing his inheritance had been to work in the family business. It had had the advantage of placing him in close contact with Lucius, and the disadvantage of making it clear in the following year that his  father's ingrained prejudice might never fade enough to reveal their relationship to him without consequences. They had bought the cottage together - a more modest home than Draco would have preferred - and invested in Hermione’s business whilst setting aside as many Galleons as they could in an attempt to prepare for the possible loss of his inheritance. Draco had also quietly moved as much of his money as he could access without raising suspicion to new vaults beyond his father’s reach. 

After the first four years of hiding from everyone, the gap that had grown between them and the world had increased exponentially. But they had also started to grow somewhat complacent about hiding. None of the imagined threats had ever materialized, and the secrecy had started to feel oppressive. They had contemplated telling a select few of their friends the truth and trying to mend those friendships.

Then, they had almost been caught together by a reporter. The Daily Prophet had run a seemingly endless series of articles slamming Draco’s mystery girlfriend. It had come near to ruining his reputation all over again. Even Harry and Ginny, the closest friends she had left, had made disparaging remarks on the subject, and they had known then that being open would cost them everything they had built together. Hermione had been terrified to lose her bookshop, her sanctuary, whose success she had poured herself into as she learned to cope with life after the war. 

That’s when the lies about their relationship took on epic proportions. They had purchased the flat, a quaint one-bedroom unit on the ground floor of a lovely little street in a Muggle neighbourhood. As far as the rest of the world knew, the flat was her home. Her friends had come to celebrate when she had ‘moved in,’ though she had begun to distance herself from them from that point on. In reality, it was where she came to hide when Draco was forced to entertain acquaintances or his father in their cottage, without her. That he had begun to have people over in his home, something he had been unwilling to allow until then, had done wonders to dispel the rumors of a love interest. They had developed the list of quick changes, now so familiar they barely registered, that allowed either of them to rapidly make their home look as though she didn’t live in it. The feminine touches had been explained away early on as the whimsical touches of a decorator, but anything that could lead anyone back to Hermione could simply be vanished at a moment’s notice, only to be returned when the coast was clear.

It wasn’t a comfortable feeling to constantly be removed from your own home. What had once been a place of safety for both of them was transformed into a rotating museum exhibit, and Hermione had struggled to belong in it whether the current set was for the couple or the bachelor. 

And yet somehow, as the years passed and the same fears continued to consume them, they had also found contentment together. Sometimes no one would visit for months, and they would settle into the comfortable intimacy of silent communication and small gestures. Their lives were so intertwined they barely functioned without each other. Other times, she spent as much time alone in the flat as she did their home, and they grew so disconnected they could barely communicate. Unpredictable things had never suited her, and she knew this lifestyle was unsustainable. She continued living it regardless because she couldn’t bear the idea of life without Draco. 

Once the arguments had begun, leaving him and returning to him had become another piece of theatre so commonplace that neither of them took the threats particularly seriously anymore. Though she meant her words in the moment, they both knew she would come home when the loneliness set in. When the memories of their best times snuck into her frustrations from living a life of secrecy and wrapped them in a blanket of familiarity and comfortable resignation, she would return and they would pretend she’d never left. 

Until tonight. It had been different. But was Hermione different? As angry as he made her, watching Draco belittle himself had only made her want to chase him and comfort him. The secrecy of their relationship wasn’t healthy, but they did love each other. Could she really walk away from the only life she knew? She had no one else now. Her friendships had faded into acquaintances as her excuses for never coming around had piled up. Everyone had moved on without her. Nothing would change, of that much she was certain. It would be too complicated to unravel so many years of lies. Though it may have started with his concerns, she was as much to blame as he was by now. She couldn’t really hold something she was complicit in against him. Tomorrow. She would go back and they could sort it all out.

A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts and she got up to answer it with a sigh. To her surprise, Draco was standing on her front stoop, one hand against the doorway, staring down at his perfectly polished shoes. 

“You came back!” she exclaimed in surprise, lifting her hand to her lips. In all the time they had been doing this dance, she had always been the one to leave and return. 

Draco looked up at her, his eyes rimmed red with sunken shadows beneath them. 

“I can’t keep doing this, Hermione. I can’t keep wishing you were here with me when the only thing standing in our way is my own cowardice. Please, come home,” he pleaded softly.

“And the press? And our friends? And your father? What do we do about them? I know it would be a terrible mess, but I don’t know if I can keep hiding, Draco.”

“I kicked him out the minute I got back. Can’t hide from him forever anyways, he’s started pushing for me to marry and produce an heir. I wouldn’t have you be my mistress.” 

“I see,” she said absent-mindedly, trying to process this new information.

Draco shuffled his weight back and forth between his feet and pulled his hands out of his pockets to run through his hair, the way he usually did when he was particularly agitated. 

“They can sod off, all of them! This is my life now,” he nearly shouted. He looked into her tear-filled eyes and his expression softened. “Our life, Hermione. From now on. No matter what they say.”

She nodded, unconvinced, but unwilling to let him go.

“Let me grab my things,” she muttered, resigned once again.

“Sure, bring a change of clothes. But we can pack up the rest tomorrow and list the flat.”

She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to stare at him in disbelief. She could barely convince herself to feel the hope that threatened to overwhelm her when he stepped towards her and wrapped her tightly in his arms.

“I mean it. Come home, Hermione.”


End file.
